H I P H O P M AT T E R S

with young African Americans. But Mathers’s beleaguered back-

ground eventually served him well in a musical genre that derives

much of its power from an outsider and outlaw status. By reaching

into the depths of what he characterized as a miserable experience,

he managed to establish a connection to hip hop’s aggrieved spirit.

Mathers found fuel to light his creative fire and, along the way, fash-

ioned one of the most arresting personalities in American pop cul-

ture. Like the character he would play in the movie 8 Mile years later, he wielded his pain and subordinated social status like a mighty

sword, fighting oĆł would-be attacks while also earning his hip-hop

stripes as a casualty of America’s preference for the privileged.

Eminem’s emphasis on his demoralizing past and the anger he

harbored toward society played well because these were also pivotal

themes in hip hop. It was as if Eminem were saying to the hip-hop

nation, �śI too am young, poor, and despised.” In short, �śLook past

my whiteness and you will see that I am one of you.”

Deeply rooted in Eminem’s appeal to the disadvantaged and the

poor, irrespective of race or color, is a powerful message: that despite their real and perceived racial diĆłerences impoverished communities

share important interests. In a nation long divided by race, the mes-

sage is revolutionary at its core. It was, after all, the lethal combination of his whiteness and working-class situation that made Elvis

Presley’s momentary jaunt across the nation’s racial boundaries such

a latently dangerous act. The idea that poor whites and poor blacks

might come together, in fun or in fury, remains radical. But racial

boundaries have often divided the poor against each other thus help-

ing, in the end, to sustain society’s racial and economic distinctions.

When those boundaries are violated, if only symbolically, so too are

the powerful myths and power relations that sustain the status quo.

That a poor white high school dropout could find hope and inspi-

ration from a musical genre so closely associated with ghetto youths

is, without question, the most fascinating aspect of Eminem’s spec-

tacular rise. And yet, a substantial part of hip hop’s currency is de-

rived from the fact that dispossessed youth around the world have

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